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The Prescription Against Heretics

Chapter XXXVIII.--Harmony of the Church and the Scriptures. Heretics Have Tampered with the Scriptures, and Mutilated, and Altered Them. Catholics Never Change the Scriptures, Which Always Testify for Them.

Where diversity of doctrine is found, there, then, must the corruption both of the Scriptures and the expositions thereof be regarded as existing. On those whose purpose it was to teach differently, lay the necessity of differently arranging the instruments of doctrine. ¹ They could not possibly have effected their diversity of teaching in any other way than by having a difference in the means whereby they taught. As in their case, corruption in doctrine could not possibly have succeeded without a corruption also of its instruments, so to ourselves also integrity of doctrine could not have accrued, without integrity in those means by which doctrine is managed. Now, what is there in our Scriptures which is contrary to us? ² What of our own have we introduced, that we should have to take it away again, or else add to it, or alter it, in order to restore to its natural soundness anything which is contrary to it, and contained in the Scriptures? ³ What we are ourselves, that also the Scriptures are (and have been) from the beginning. ⁴ Of them we have our being, before there was any other way, before they were interpolated by you. Now, inasmuch as all interpolation must be believed to be a later process, for the express reason that it proceeds from rivalry which is never in any case previous to nor home-born ⁵ with that which it emulates, it is as incredible to every man of sense that we should seem to have introduced any corrupt text into the Scriptures, existing, as we have been, from the very first, and being the first, as it is that they have not in fact introduced it who are both later in date and opposed (to the Scriptures). One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition. For although Valentinus seems to use the entire volume, ⁶ he has none the less laid violent hands on the truth only with a more cunning mind and skill ⁷ than Marcion. Marcion expressly and openly used the knife, not the pen, since he made such an excision of the Scriptures as suited his own subject-matter. ⁸ Valentinus, however, abstained from such excision, because he did not invent Scriptures to square with his own subject-matter, but adapted his matter to the Scriptures; and yet he took away more, and added more, by removing the proper meaning of every particular word, and adding fantastic arrangements of things which have no real existence. ⁹

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Les prescriptions contre les Hérétiques

XXXVIII.

Mais où l'on remarque cette opposition, là doit se trouver sans doute l'altération des Ecritures. Ceux qui ont formé le projet de changer l'enseignement, se sont vus forcés d'en changer aussi les sources. Eh! comment introduire une nouvelle doctrine, sans avoir de quoi la fonder? Mais comme la corruption de la doctrine supposait déjà celle des livres dépositaires de la doctrine, nous ne pouvions non plus la conserver pure et saine sans conserver ces livres dans toute leur intégrité. Nos Ecritures auraient-elles donc contenu quelque chose qui nous fût contraire? Aurions-nous eu besoin, pour nous en débarrasser, pour établir des systèmes qu'elles renversaient, de changer, de tronquer, d'interpoler? Ce que nous sommes, les Ecritures le sont, et dès leur origine. Nous sommes Chrétiens par elles, avant qu'il y eût rien qui nous fut contraire, avant que vous eussiez pu les altérer. Toute altération a pour principe la haine et l'envie, nécessairement postérieures et étrangères à l'objet altéré. Ainsi, un homme sensé ne pourra jamais se persuader que nous, qui sommes nés avec les Ecritures, nous les ayons corrompues plutôt que leurs ennemis, qui sont venus après elles. L'un, en effet, a corrompu le texte, l'autre le sens. Et bien que Valentin semble recevoir l'Ancien Testament tout entier, dans le fond il n'est pas moins ennemi de la vérité que Marcion: il est plus artificieux. Marcion, le fer à la main au lieu du stylet, a mis en pièces toutes les Ecritures, pour donner du poids à son système. Valentin a eu l'air de les épargner, et de chercher moins à les accommoder à ses erreurs, qu'à concilier ses erreurs avec elles; et cependant il a plus retranché, plus interpolé que Marcion, en ôtant à tous les mots leur énergie et leur signification naturelle, pour leur donner des sens forcés, et en imaginant tous ces êtres invisibles et fantastiques.